Which Baby Shower Invitation?

My sister-in-law is having a baby shower this month and I volunteered to make her invitations. This is her second child. I was supposed to make her baby shower invitations for her first baby, but I got sick and the rest of my family ended up getting sick too. It took 3 weeks for all of us to get better and for me to finally be able to work on her invitations. By then, there wasn't enough time to make them. I ended up having to send store-bought invites. I really felt like I let her down.

This time around, I made sure I had enough time to make them. It also helped that less people were invited the second time around.

I knew that I wanted to do something with an umbrella. The Scattered Showers stamp set from Papertrey Ink was perfect for what I had in mind. The first card I made used Cream and Scaret Jewel colors. This card looks so simple, but it took me forever to design it. I had the umbrella and sentiment done, but wasn't sure what else to do. It took me a few days to finish this card because I kept drawing a blank. It's funny how it finally turned out looking like nothing I envisioned. I liked the simplicity of it, but decided I wanted something with more color and which incorporated the color green. My SIL likes that color.

This is the design I decided on. I liked the umbrellas on dimensionals and the added bling. But, it still looked a little plain.

So, I decided to put polka dots for the background (from another PTI stamp set). I liked how it looked. The problem was that I would have to stamp the polka dot image 4 times on each card. That would take awhile because I would have to make sure the dots were lined up. One wrong move and I would have to start over.

Here's a close-up. So, although I liked the polka dots, it would require too much work for each card. Plus, I thought the umbrellas tended to blend into the background too much since they had polka dots on them too.

Here's the final version. I had bought this stamp background a few years ago. I thought it would be perfect for baby cards. I was right! It was exactly what the card needed. I only had to stamp the image twice and didn't have to worry about them lining up perfectly. It made it look like it was raining baby items.

I made some matching party favors. I'll try to post pictures of them soon.